Only two hundred years ago India was the richest country in the world. Today it is the poorest. The gorgeous palaces of its kings with their enormous treasures were the objects of admiration and wonder for the other nations of the world. Its flourishing industries and its highly lucrative trade excited the greed and envy of the merchant classes everywhere. Its merchant ships laden with cargoes of valuable spices, silken and cotton manufactures, and precious jewels sailed into the harbors of England and other countries of Europe. How the maritime nations of the world vied with each other to possess the trade of the East Indies and fought over concessions in the Empire of the mighty Moghuls is a matter of common knowledge to all students of history. It was the fame of India that excited the imagination of Columbus when he set out westward on his historic voyage; it was only by accident that he discovered America. He had undertaken his voyage in search for a new route to the fabulous riches of India, so that America really owes her discovery to the fame of that ancient land. Pick up any standard work on mediæval history or classical literature and you will find that the riches of India and the splendor of the courts of its kings had become proverbial among the nations of Europe. That fame of East Indian wealth which had inspired the careers of many a European explorer, military commander, and financial genius had totally disappeared long before the end of the nineteenth century; with the disappearing of the Indian kings the splendor of their courts had also vanished; with the extinction of the Indian fabric industries her flourishing trade had ceased; and simultaneously with the loss of its handicrafts and independence the prestige and prosperity of the nation had come to an end. As early as the year 1900 A.D. India had begun to be regarded by the historians as the poorest country in the world. Her daily per capita income was fixed at three quarters of a penny (equivalent to one and nine-sixteenths cents), and it was estimated that the dawn of the twentieth century found among the inhabitants of India one hundred and sixty million people who did not know what it was to have one square meal a day. The percentage of literacy, which included a knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, had dropped from thirty-three per cent in 1757 to less than four per cent in 1900. What is the cause of this astounding change in the condition of an ancient people like the East Indians? How did it happen that the same period which witnessed a sudden rise in the prosperity of most other nations of the world found in the Hindu nation an equal or even more sudden fall? What was the cause of the ruin of India’s famous silk and cotton industries and of the loss of its political and economic independence? How did India drop from the highest rank to the lowest, from the proudest position to the humblest?